The 10-year-old daughter of Vietnamese dissident blogger “Mother Mushroom” has written a letter calling on US first lady Melania Trump to push for her mother’s release from prison ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit next month.
The girl’s mother, whose real name is Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, is among more than two dozen Vietnamese who have been jailed as part of a sweeping crackdown on dissent over the past year.
Analysts say the authoritarian regime has been emboldened by the rise of Donald Trump, who is seen as taking a softer approach on human rights.
The handwritten letter by Nguyen Bao Nguyen, whose nickname “Mushroom” is the root of her mother’s pen name, comes ahead of the US president’s first official visit to Vietnam for next month’s APEC summit.
“Please help my family reunite, because I know my mother did nothing wrong,” Nguyen Bao Nguyen wrote in the note posted on her grandmother Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan’s Facebook page on Thursday.
Lan said it is the fourth letter the girl has penned to Melania Trump, who in March gave Quynh a “Woman of Courage” award.
The move riled Hanoi, which said it was “not appropriate and of no benefit for the development of relations between the two countries.”
“I told my granddaughter that Mrs Trump is very busy, her assistant might read the letter, so we can only hope,” Lan said.
Quynh was in June handed a 10-year prison sentence on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda on Facebook that touched on politics and environmental issues.
She is one of Vietnam’s most vocal critics, penning regular blog posts on the nation’s human rights record, deaths in police custody and the handling of a toxic leak that killed tonnes of fish last year.
The US, Britain and the EU have all called for her release.
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